robotics

Executive summary: Almost every profession can be approached with the future-proof Big 5 human challenges and Big 5 singularity technologies in mind, and still be kind of fun and rewarding in itself. So, not just robotics. And, yes, still hating on finance :)

Remember to bookmark this site, sign up for my free newsletter, and read the first page of my free e-book (and more are coming). Not least, share this article to save at least one poor schmuck from a death by automation.

Show me the money!

I’ve realised two things:

1) you don’t care about happiness

and

2) you demand precise guidance for your education and career (as opposed to general “whatever makes your heart beat, or help humankind with robotics” type of advice)

Nobody cares about your schmakapalbhati breathing, grandpa

So, where does this realization come from all of a sudden? Well…

I get very few questions about, and reactions to, articles about financial investments, about pension savings, about the future of robotics, about fulfillment and happiness vs. fortune and fame. You know, the things I actually write about, the “know yourself”, “lower the threshold to get started”, “champagne spray parties aren’t that fun” kind of posts.

What I do get is an endless stream of demand for career advice: “Should I study this or that?”, “Should I work here or there?”, “Should I focus on a traditional career or go it alone as an entrepreneur?”, “Which industries should I target?”, etc.

I thought I had already answered all of the above with:

Skip (formal, traditional) school

Just say no to finance

Be an entrepreneur

Solve the big 5 with the big 5

Have fun no matter what you do

Done!

Robotics! How hard can it be?

When that, to my great surprise and deep disappointment, wasn’t enough I specified:

Work with robotics (which I thought was self-explanatory)

That still didn’t cut it, apparently, so I tried this:

Think of all the separate parts of a robot; legs, fingers, muscles, arms actuators, sensors, tools; or it’s sub-systems; motion, balance, vision, smell, and figure out what part or system you think needs improvement.

Another line of attack could be visiting every local robotics company you can think of and connect the dots, i.e., identify which companies could benefit from each other without competing. Or, think about ways to combine several different solutions to, e.g., vision or balance, into the same robot.

I got nothing but glazed over eyes and open mouths from that (I know Japan is ahead in both fields that spring to mind, but I’m strictly talking robotics here. Then again, robots… never mind)

So, I tried being specific:

“Here are videos of bipedal robots, BB8-type of ball balancing robots (5 years before BB8), quadripeds (and more). And here are bipedal robots using gyroscopes for balance, and here are humanoids using fancy software algorithms choosing the optimal foot movement from an internal trial and error simulation of 100 different choices in a hundredth of a second. And here are quads learning from experience, and here are robots actually forecasting when they’re about to be hit and (simulating and) bracing before impact.”

“Yeah, yeah, schmobotics, but will I get rich more predictably in management consulting than in finance, albeit richer in the latter if I rise to the top?”. “Should I take that job in the economy department of a hedge fund or stay as sales at a big investment bank?”

No!

No, no, no! The proper reaction would have been: “Ah, but if we combined sound, laser, Kinect, blueprints, repositories and memory in the same robot, it would actually know exactly what it is dealing with. I wonder if it could catch a baseball if…”, and “What if you built a quadriped that had balance balls for feet and very small such pressure sensitive balls for fingertips (great for gripping delicate things just enough not to let them slip).”

…

“Perhaps not on all feet or all fingertips. It could be equipped with a gyroscope as well… several…, and a simulation engine that dealt with sudden blows as well as predictable impacts (hello vision!). “I wonder what power source they are using?”. “What kind of ‘muscles’ do they use? Pure mechanical spring systems might be better (already done though).”. “What if it falls down or rolls over?”

“Hey, Sprezza! How come a bipedal robot isn’t much better at managing stairs than humans? Why do they act as if every step is completely new to them? Shouldn’t you be able to give it a hard kick in the back, and it should be ready long before impact, and either bracing enough (judging your weight and kick speed and power correctly) or having another plan for regaining its balance, as well as be able to catch a baseball at the same time? Why not do an impromptu somersault with in-air side-split before making a perfect superhero landing on the stairs?!”

Yeah, I guess I shouldn’t hope for such a question, since monkeys are more likely to fly out of my ass long before that happens.

Ouch!

And we’re still only talking about robotics, and in very crude and tangible respects. I haven’t even updated the above thoughts in the last 5 years and still the kids don’t get it. So, here’s a slight update:

Add “cop” to the mix…, as in robocopters. There are multicopters everywhere now: quadcopters, hexacopters, octocopters etc. for filming, selfies, weaponry, inspection, search and rescue, even plans for commercial airliners. The Avengers live in a large octocopter since several years back.

So, now I can direct young people to Youtube videos of cars that can drive on vertical surfaces aided by copter fans, to swarms of small quads interacting, helping each other maneuver, accelerate, catch things, and soon, with your help, maybe showing emergent behavior as in Crichton’s amazing (his best) novel “Prey”.

Don’t forget AlphaGo’s amazing Go victories, and its future careers in health care, online poker, mining, global warming research etc. Or Alphabet’s other robot ventures (through Boston Dynamics), not to mention all the slithering, swimming, crawling and flying things on display in various TED talks.

The reason I singled out robotics as a good example of a change resistant career, was that I thought the opportunities within programming, mechanics, sales, miniaturization, materials, batteries, solar, project management etc. were self-evident. In addition, automation stands a good chance of being the last industry to be automated.

Apparently these things weren’t self evident, so let’s be a little more specific:

I think robotics has the potential of becoming for this century what the auto industry has been for the last century.

At present there are a lot of stupid single-purpose robots everywhere – some are status symbols, some are not anymore. They are called cars, washing machines, dishwashers, vacuum cleaners etc. Soon, more general-purpose robots will take over more and more household chores, caretaking of sick and old, companionship, telepresence/socializing. I also think robots can become the new status symbol that so far has been reserved for cars.

They had that vision a little prematurely in Rocky IV (released in 1984), but now, 30 years on, there may be just ten years more before its realization. Aibos and copterdrones have been pointing firmly in that direction for at least half a decade now.

Okay, so I’ve understood I have to be much more concrete when guiding you. I do get it, you don’t have the same experience as I do, or the overview and time to think about how certain technologies and human challenges combine to form tremendous career opportunities for you.

My bad.

I’m such a COK (meaning suffering from Curse Of Knowledge) for not being more clear and precise about these things. This post is meant to remedy that.

It’s not just about robotics, but all the Big 5

The way I see it is this. If you want to be as future proof as possible, you should work in areas that are hard to automate (preferably the automation-enabling industries themselves) and that deal with the largest and most challenging issues the human race is facing:

“5” Challenges

Energy

Pollution

Global warming

Food

Water

Longevity/death

Depression (in the wake of automation, unemployment and abundance)

I think the best way to deal with the above big challenges is to be found in the following exponentially developing technologies:

“5” Technologies

Artificial Intelligence

Robotics

Nanotechnology

Biotechnology

Additive manufacturing

More specific areas where you could contribute are listed below. Remember that each one of the below are meant in the widest of senses. “Programming”, e.g., means everything from actually coding, to designing user friendly apps or planning out whole systems, to marketing them. The same goes for VR (headset hardware, treadmills, software, games, simulation software…) or genetics (reading the code faster and cheaper, finding useful patterns/genes/diseases, visualization software, marketing) and so on.

Subcategories

Programming

Virtual and Augmented Reality, vision

Bionics (sense restoration and augmentation, X-ray vision, e.g.)

Artificial agents

Space exploration and mining

Artificial biology

Genetics

Stem cell research

Organ printing

Driverless vehicles

Neurology/brain interfaces

Multi-resistant bacteria/bacteriophages

Mechanics

Motors/actuators

Psychology/emotion sensing and manipulation

Surgery

Health care

Pandemics

Carbon capture

Desalination of sea water (source, clean, transport, finance…)

Fusion (chamber, materials, fuel, storage…)

Solar cells

Housing (prospect, plan, materials, energy, agri)

Migration (where to live, how to be integrated, educated)

Debt clean-up

Entertainment (incl. porn)

Psychology (dealing with migration or not fitting in the automated world of the future)

Energy storage (batteries)

Vertical farming

Insect farming

Algae farming

Ecological (insect fed) fish farming

Since those technologies themselves are in the vanguard, and driven by human creativity, they are the least likely to be automated anytime soon. Rather they are advanced by humans aided by tools provided by the previous technological generation in an ever accelerating cycle. That’s where you want to be, whether it is in engineering, design, marketing, psychology etc.

I guess you need a list for that last part:

Engineering

Design

Marketing

Psychology

…

What do we want? And how?

We want a time machine! When do we want it? It is irrelevant!

by Pixabay

Alright, sorry for that. My apologies.

What do we want? Well, you want money, I know that much, but why do you want it?

“That’s irrelevant, just show me the money” you might say, but it would be wrong.

You want to buy food, clean water, a roof over your head, clothes, other stuff, healthcare, energy for running your tools. Well that and a Lamborghini, fancy food, champagne for your spray parties at Ocean Club, Marbella etc.

How are these things going to be produced? With the help of better and better tools provided by the big 5 technologies.

What’s your part in it?

Well, what can you do? What are you interested in? Your education doesn’t really matter, unless you want to become a medical doctor, a lawyer, a finance slave or work at a top tier management consultant. Most every other line of work lies wide open.

Just start tinkering, taking things apart, meeting people, interviewing them, reading stuff, connecting dots, studying online (here are 144 resources) and soon you’ll be the expert, the having ‘right’ education or not. If you’re driven and interested, you could fit 50 hours a week of your future-proofing, on top of the lowly bread winning activity you temporarily have to engage in. Remember how you could play all day long as a child, with no regard to remuneration for your efforts? That’s how I feel about blogging and podcasting, and probably would about tinkering with robot hardware and software too.

After just one single year, your 2500 hours will have brought you close to expert level, in whatever you single out as your area. Imagine where you’d be in 5 (the length of a typical education) if you keep at it.

Speed things up with a little acid

I’m not you, and I can’t go through the pros and cons associated with every conceivable job. However, think more in terms of satisfying yourself, than living either vicariously or conspicuously. Think more in terms of exploring and possibly leading for the experience in itself, rather than becoming a CEO or other kind of manager, just for the status and money.

Life is not about being a rock star, it’s about rocking and rolling

…you still need the money however. Sure.

And you want to feel pride about your work, and not having to fear being axed all the time. Well then, back to the list of future-proof jobs, industries, challenges, their intersections with each other, with your interests and skills; and…

Well, here’s some food for thought: Finance wasn’t cool or high-paying when Buffett or Marks or Dalio and other finance gurus entered the business.

They did it because they were fascinated by understanding business models and doing research. In short: they did it for fun, not money. They did it for the rainbow; there just happened to be a pot of gold at the end of it as well. If you focus too much on the gold, you’ll miss the rainbow altogether.

Since they began in the business, we’ve experienced 40 years of falling interest rates and more and more (over-)banking, as well as rocketing valuations to the highest point in history (median MC/GAV, which unlike all other models is more than 90% correlated with subsequent decade long average returns).

That’s why and how they got rich, including dozens of followers and wannabes riding the same spectacular wave of financial innovation and money debauchement. I think that trend is about to reverse, leading to much worse prospects for employment, careers and riches.

Thus, I think it’s time to focus on real innovation and production (virtual reality counts as real) instead of the ephemeral Ponzi scheme that is finance.

Oh, and if you claim to have a ‘burning interest’ in finance, investing or management consulting, you shouldn’t care about slaving away at Goldman or McKinsey. Or about being paid the big bucks by somebody else. Open your own shop, manage your own money, develop your own models in collaboration with like-minded people on social media.

Rock on!

This is the summary: Rock not rock star.

Fun, unique, human, entrepreneur, problem-solving; not an employed drone in a soon-to-be-automated mindless toil in whore village – at least not as more than a short gig to get started.

By the way, my wolfram just lit up: anything worth doing is future proof. Well, unless you really think driving a truck, ship, airplane and similar extremely automation-prone jobs are meaningful and fun if it weren’t for the pay.

Now, sign up for my free newsletter, and share this article with a friend heading in the wrong direction.

Executive summary: The article deals with blows dealt, burdens carried, triumphs achieved and some of the most important lessons my unlikely educational and career path taught me.

For example:

Save your alcohol for when you want to drink

You decide where you fit in, but there is a time for charades and another for being yourself

Turn on your metacognition as soon as possible (I almost missed the chance)

Make sure you have a Plan B, then you can be spontaneous

Don’t let prejudice come in your way (like I almost did with economics)

Sleep and take care of your body

Deep Work – maintain and enhance your ability to focus and learn deeply and rapidly

Close calls are just that, “close”. Don’t let them shape you

If you aren’t really interested in the personal details behind the lessons, you can stop reading now. Unlike most of my articles, there aren’t any profound insights hidden deep in this article, just more or less inspiring anecdotes about my shortcomings and naivete. Mistakes you can and should avoid.

Tip: Sign up for my newsletter to get future articles about personal development, career, education, finance and technology for free (and my free eBook with my most important investment lessons)

A few facts that make the picture more nuanced. I actually don’t want to come across as fully retarded or one-dimensional.

I’m complex. We all are, but it’s easy to forget.

I didn’t drink any alcohol or try tobacco until I turned 18, i.e. in 1990. A wager with my father. I definitely don’t have a drinking problem.

Summer of 2015

I thought exercise was for pre-computer era cavemen only, until I turned 13 and saw Rocky IV…

Now, at 44, I benchpress 140kg (309 lbs) and aim to increase that PB this year. And I run 2 miles (3.2 km) in 12 minutes as a warm-up before lifting weights.

I was bullied as a child, but actually didn’t really understand it until my 20s. I somehow thought the fighting and name-calling was normal. Mean, but normal.

I’m certain I have a (high functional) autism spectrum disorder, “Aspberger’s”. I only realized this a few years ago, first as a joke, but gradually more and more as fact.

I’m naturally contrarian… independent to a fault, but also inherently gullible (well, I was the latter. Not anymore)

I can be unbelievably oblivious to obvious phenomena, and stubbornly certain of “facts” most people miss. In that respect, I do bear a certain resemblance with Michael Burry in The Big Short.

I’m extremely risk avert, and extremely risk-tolerant at the same time. This one is just weird, as I take immense financial and physical risks at times, while acting as chicken little incarnate at others.

Patient – you have no idea how patient, and I’m only getting worse/better. Already as a teenager I was known to just wait idly for hours at whatever meeting point was decided or bus was supposed to come.

A shy exhibitionist…

Alright, enough, let’s get this story started. There are valuable lessons in here.

No (business) sense at all

I had no business going into business (finance) to begin with – and yet, it was the perfect match; obvious for everyone to see from middle school and onward.

Since I was 10, I made money programming, later lending money to class mates (hungry for sweets) at a steep interest rate. I was always good at math, and I loved counting money, loved stories about money… So, born to be an investment banker it seems.

And, yet, in middle school, I praised Sweden for making sure I could live off of welfare once school was out. That was my plan.

Who would have thought that weird kid with a northern accent, failing in school, wearing but a t-shirt in winter, always hurting himself (8 concussions) and a communist agenda would become a full blown libertarian and managing the European hedge fund of the decade? Still enjoying the occasional barefoot walk though.

Train wreck

Actually, I really had no business going into anything but natural sciences. I loved physics and chemistry, I was proficient at math, philosophy and logic, and held nothing but contempt for economics and similar social “sciencies”. I hadn’t even heard about the Stockholm School Of Economics until a few days before the application deadline.

Despite no business doing business, a few years later I graduated with flying colors, with a Masters in Business Administration and Financial Economics.

Actually not only should I never have applied (contempt, ignorance and lack of ambition, just ‘happened’ to get the perfect grades required for getting in), I should have been expelled…several times over.

All this ‘no business doing business’ business is of course meant ironically; apparently it was exactly what I was meant for

I was 18 when I commenced my first semester at SSE. I was 18 when I had my first taste of alcohol. It was a beautiful disaster, a train wreck in slow motion. Luckily I was both poor and cheap and thus only drank at home before going out, and had no habit of partying every weekend, just a few times per semester. Luckily, since…

At the prize ceremony after the hazings during the first week, I had to be restrained and carried out by six older students.

seems more like “hosing”

Another time I apparently decided to lock myself in one of the toilets overnight after a party to save time. I was quite unruly during class that day.

After a school pub, I woke up in a small outside air and water cabinet at a gas station some 20 miles from home, wearing a t-shirt in early winter and with surprisingly bloody jeans.

But the partying was only half the story, or a third. E.g., during the first year, I usually brought a sharp knife to school every day… for my loaf of bread and jar of honey, that I kept in my big jacket, for lunch and snacking during the day.

In Harry Potter, the spell “expelliarmus” disarms the opponent.

There is a new HP book coming out this spring. HP was close to not getting in, as well as expelled, himself.

Expelliamus

The final third was when I and my closest friends at SSE turned in an assignment to our female and feminist teacher in Management, with a seminude picture of Madonna, marked below, in a ‘romantic’ font in italics, with the word for “female teacher”.

Today, we would have been expelled no questions asked. And that would have been the end of it.

In 1990, however, questions were asked, all the way up to the head of the faculty of Management, as well as the dean of SSE. We got away with just a warning though, after I made the case that a male teacher would just have laughed at a Schwarzenegger picture from “Conan the barbarian” on his assignment.

So, what should have happened is this:

I should have been expelled from Sweden’s most prestigious school and had to start over somewhere else, probably studying to become a chemistry teacher in the small city of Uppsala (which I had given serious thought before going for SSE).

Given I had tried making cocaine from coca leaves when I was 17 (I liked chemistry and I had a stock of the right chemicals at home, as well as a bag of leaves), it’s not unreasonable to assume I could have become a real life Walter White (“Breaking Bad”) and probably done hard time sooner or later.

Instead, I soon realized I actually had decent grades already, despite doing my best to ruin my studies of the lowly subjects of economics and accounting. I’ve had to re-take one test… accounting 101. I just couldn’t get those debits and credits right in the t-accounts… They kept switching sides all the time.

Whatever wasn’t top notch would later disappear in the aggregation process to the final grades. And with a conscious effort in the key subject during the last semester, I aced it so hard I could hardly believe it myself, and thus got perfect grades from the school I had dissed so uncompromisingly during the first year.

Did I mention I used to sit at the very back of the auditorium, one level up where there were a few seats typically reserved for latecomers? Up there, I made childish signs that I showed to the lecturer… and threw airplanes at my fellow students from 15 feet up.

Talk about being “retarded” and wanting to ruin any prospects of “making it”.

I think I subconsciously protested against my decision to go to SSE, when the “right” choice obviously was physics at the Royal Institute Of Technology (which I actually also had applied to and been accepted to).

A thousand flaws, and only one right

One thing only saved me from day one:

I learned to read and write, to count and do math by myself, watching TV (clip below from the 1973 pedagogical children’s show) when I was 4 years old.

Math always came easy and I always “over studied”, thus making the next step almost too easy and so on and on. That meant that no matter how disinterested and slow to learn I was in “text subjects”, I had all the time in the world to master those too.

I did it mostly because I thought it looked more symmetrical with equal numbers on all subjects on my grades in secondary school (not to mention the few bucks my father gave me for every perfect score on a test [1 USD] or grade [5 USD each per year for subjects 1-10, and 50 USD each for subjects 11-17).

Street fighter

So, I was admitted to SSE. And once in, I wasn’t expelled, even if it was a close call. Consequently I never turned to meth cooking or did any hard time.

But I fought.

I fought in the streets, I fought at school. I fought in my neighborhood. I fought abroad. I tried not to, but there were always people attacking or challenging me.

I tried to back down, handing the victory to them verbally, but they almost always pursued.

Once, I got accused of wanting to be the “king of Vallby (my neighborhood). I said I was happy letting him keep his crown. He, however, was very eager to fight me over it, and started with a right kick to my left shoulder. That ended very badly. For him. My immediate response was a long, straight punch to (through) his larynx.

Fortunately, I almost always ended on top (except in middle school where there were always too many fighting me at the same time), sometimes plucking their teeth from my elbow afterward, or finishing them off with a series of knees to the, face peeling the flesh off their cheekbone, or with a straight punch to the back, or front (that does it quite nicely!), of the neck.

Blood, teeth, hair, flesh, naked bone, but never gouged eyes, broken bones or death. I had a code.

I don’t regret a single punch, kick, knee or elbow. They started it. One of my most hard-core principles is ahimsa=non violence. However, if you have other principles you’d like to use… Sure, we can do it your way.

Yup, no business doing business.

So, you see, I should have become a hacker (programming and selling games at the age of 10-12, remember? I also loved the movie “War Games” when it came out in 1983) or a drug cook, being my own crazy ass bodyguard.

And I graduated. Kind of.

I actually started working in spring 1994 as a broker’s assistant, before finishing my thesis. I finally got around to it two years later when an inner voice said “you may have your career cut out for you, but you don’t want to be a quitter“.

Mainly, I wanted that diploma, in order to go back to Argentina and marry the young girl I met after my stint as a mountain climber there (“andinista”; reaching the summit of Aconcagua, mountain of death, 6961m/22838ft), and still have a way back (Plan B) in case it didn’t work out.

Always have a plan B

She was the daughter of a shoe mogul, one of Argentina’s richest men, at least one of the top legitimate tax paying men, so as a bonus I could look forward to a life of relative leisure – which was tempting in my state of constant sleep deprivation.

Summit of Aconcagua – I wonder why so many amateurs die on that mountain

Now on to the real struggles

I studied at SSE 1990-1994, during which time Sweden experienced a deep financial crisis, with among other things all major banks at the verge of defaulting, and the national debt inflating out of control. Not unlike Greece these days.

In 1993 and 1994 I applied for jobs at the largest management consulting firms and investment banks, as well as a few other top notch jobs. Eventually, due to wanting to secure just about anything in the crisis, I went for a broker’s assistant employment at a third tier broker. After several interviews there I (barely) got it.

Phew.

Six months later, my test employment was up for review and possibly made into a real hire. The following words sealed my fate: “The others think you are a little weird and don’t really want you, but I think you could grow into this”.

And there it was, toward the end of 1994 I had secured a real full time employment with a salary of 14 000 SEK per month (20k USD per year), before Swedish taxes, no paid overtime or bonuses…

In parallel, I worked extra at my father’s business, making and translating technical manuals for pulp manufacturers and programming real time databases for the same.

Since the head broker stayed late, I did too, usually until 10-11 pm, and then I stayed some more – not seldom until midnight or later. Sometimes, after that, I had to head over to my father’s office to do some programming before going home to catch 3-4 hours of sleep.

I was in charge of the morning report and had to get in by 6-6:30 am to write it (based on Financial Times, the Lex column and some other sources nobody in Sweden seemed to read) and put it in the fax (1994-1995, remember? Very few had e-mail back then). Once I got the comment my report was the best in the market, it became sacred to me, which basically ensured I never got to sleep in.

Doing 110 on the financial freeway

A few weeks I hit 110 hours of logged work. My average was over 80. And we still squeezed in quite a few nights out on top of that. Many times I felt weak, shaky, right on the brink, but was more or less ordered out and about on weekdays – and still had to take care of my sacred morning report. A few times I slept just one hour or so in the staircase outside the office and went in together with security at 6 am. Later I got my own key and could sleep in the reception couch instead.

For a while I seriously considered moving to the office, and save my rent (approximately 10% of my wages before tax)

I didn’t know any better; I thought I would risk my job if I didn’t drink.

Don’t do what I did. Put quality before quantity.

Think about what’s actually reasonable, and ask outright what your priorities should be if you aren’t sure. Typically, drinking on weekdays is not requested or desired. I would have gained more respect and authority sooner, if I had been sober, slept more, performed better. So, decide explicitly who you are and what you prioritize to make it easier to stick to.

I didn’t

Among other stupid things…:

I didn’t take a single day of vacation during my first 18-20 months and I typically worked weekends.

I gave up martial arts and working out. Between 1990-1994 I used to work out 10-15 times a week.

I even broke up with my girlfriend the day before my first day at the job “I won’t have time for you anyway”.

I ate at McDonald’s three times a day (lunch was paid with food coupons that were included in my wages, after office hours dinner and late dinner were paid by the company). Soon I was pale and fat enough that my ten year older colleagues noted “You have given up, no question about it”.

During my first vacation, the Aconcagua expedition of Christmas 1995 I got even fatter. So, by the start of 1996, I was fat, pale, sleep deprived and bottom feeding in Swedish finance and with no graduation diploma. You could say I had exactly lived up to expectations set in middle school a dozen years earlier.

The turning point

Then, in early springtime 1996, I made a decision: I was going back to Vicky in Argentina.

What?!

Not what you expected, was it?

I got out of my chair several times, heading for the Managing Director to resign. In the end, however, I realized I had to have a plan B, before burning any bridges, and decided to finish my thesis and get that Masters diploma before buying a no-return ticket to Mendoza. In the meantime I got asked to consider a job as head of IT research at Sweden’s largest bank. Around the same time I got in shape for a TV show, learning a lot about dieting in the process.

The summer of 1996, much like that of 1994, was one of the best in several decades, with warm, dry weather – the perfect Swedish summer -both of them. But I never saw them apart from through the office (1994) and school (1996) windows, as I worked long hours or wrote my thesis.

I love summer. I love the sun. I love being outside. And the two best summers of my lifetime were completely wasted, spending myself futilely at a line of work I still didn’t understand and a worthless thesis.

Anyway, by the end of 1996 I had my diploma, I was back to lifting weights (albeit at half my previous weights), and I was the head of IT research at a big bank right at the start of the internet era.

A little less work, much less partying, and no 100+ hour work weeks

At Swedbank I reduced my workload to some 70-75 hours a week on average. Sure, during earnings season, I often worked past midnight, but I partied less and probably averaged 6 hours of sleep a night. Still too little of course, and I often longed for a normal job, normal hours, a full night’s sleep. Sometimes not even my evil and very loud alarm clock could wake me…

In addition to sleep deprivation I didn’t eat any fish whatsoever. Hardly any greens either. I lived off of cheap minced beef and pork chops. I had colds at least twice a year, often 4-5 times. My guess is my average daily intake of Omega-3 was less than one gram.

At least I started lifting weights again, first alone in the bank’s employee gym in the cellar. Later with a colleague and friend at a gym club. After 3-4 years at Swedbank I was pretty fit again and had a 110kg bench PB (243 lbs).

Anyway, by the year 2000 I had become a top ranked analyst, increased my income more than 10-fold, almost slept enough and “only” had 1-2 serious colds a year.

My tip to you is to make up your mind and prioritize. Decide what’s important to you and go after it. I just did a lot of things I were told or thought I was expected to do, without ever asking them, or me, what the end game was.

More tangibly I would advice you to practice deep work, to shut out the rest of the world, turn off all notifications for an hour or two once a day, and produce high quality intellectual work at the top of your ability. It will make you relaxed, fulfilled and amazingly productive at the same time. Everybody will respect you for it, and never think twice about why your e-mail turnaround time sometimes extends to several hours or days.

There are bad days, an there are bad days

Oh, before I forget, there was still room for the occasional crazy bender. Like that time by the end of 1999, when I woke up on a workday morning, in a small room with nothing but a thin plastic mattress.

Yes, the police station. With no keys and no watch it turned out when they released me. Eventually I found my way back to the crime scene of the night before, where both items were retrieved from a glass full of water. Thank you Omega for making the James Bond Seamaster so sturdy and waterproof.

Once I got to my apartment, I learned that one of my friendly neighbors had filed charges against me, and in addition would do his utmost to get me evicted. And, then, I dragged myself to the office, hoping I wouldn’t get fired. One thing kept me up that day, I knew that most of my anxiety was purely chemical with no real bearing on reality.

Not like other children

Well that thought was just about as f*** up as when I less than a year later crashed on a motor bike alone in the woods, bending my right knee sideways, thinking, while screaming my lungs out, that in due time nanotechnology would fix that knee perfectly. I actually had torn my right knee ACL 8 years earlier without knowing or checking. My days as a ninja had raised my pain threshold a bit… I didn’t check my knee this time either, despite limping severely for months.

Still not right in the head

I still suffered from chronic sleep deficit though. During my summer holidays I partied a lot and often slept far into the afternoon. I often took a break from working out as well and typically returned 20-25% weaker just a few weeks later.

Early in the year 2000, I was 27 years old, a top ranked analyst, and attended Swedbank’s key employee management program “Top 25”, or something like that. The final week was held at Wharton, Philadelphia. Despite all the hype, I just wanted to sleep, to stop burning my candle from both ends with 70-80 hour work weeks and client liquid dinners. I was thinking about downsizing, going back to my home town, perhaps get a 9-5 job as a bank teller. And sleep.

Then it happened. Something weird and unlikely. This burned out wreck of a 27-year old, who just wanted out, was suddenly hired by a hedge fund startup.

I decided to keep office hours in check, to sleep well, drink less and be fully focused on work while working. I thus finally planned to really work at the top of my ability.

Just one thing… I was interviewed twice that spring and made quite big headlines, making the bosses of my bosses to be consider not letting me start at all. Yup, that close of no retarded HF manager, just a retard. Again.

The first few months, I was like a machine. I worked exactly 12 hours a day on weekdays, from 7 am to 7 pm, completely focused on building the perfect excel models and learning as much as I could about the companies I covered. Every little detail I might have overlooked at the sell-side, I was now hell-bent on finding, understanding and putting into context.

After a while, I finally realized there are no perfect Excel models. And finding everything out isn’t optimal either (due to time constraints). I also gradually reduced my typical workweek toward 55 hours rather than 60. On the other hand more and more work sneaked home with me through cell phones and faster and faster internet connections. Almost every day I was on the phone, or reading earnings reports or monitoring the US stock market for several hours after leaving the office.

By and large, when I was made partner and portfolio manager in 2004, I was back to 70 hours a week on average. At least I managed to squeeze in 3-4 workout sessions a week but I hardly had time for anything else.

During the most intense years, let’s say 2004-2006, due to increased responsibilities as analyst, managing director and client responsible in addition to my main gig as portfolio manager my aging body took issue with the stress, long hours and amount of alcohol that went through the system. I decreased the number of weight lifting sessions from 4 a week to 3 a week, and started planning for backing down to 2/week. I thought I had peaked at 32 and the game was basically over.

And right there and then, my golden era started. I established a pattern of working 7:30 am to 5:30 pm, i.e. 50 hours a week at the office, and limited amounts of time from home (mainly during earnings seasons). Thanks to eating better (more fish and fish oil), I stopped getting several colds a year after 2006 (I haven’t had one since). I also increased the number of weight lifting sessions to 4/week and added a couple of hours of cardio each week.

The period 2006-2012 was truly amazing. We grew, I worked less but better, we hired several really good analysts, we won awards, I made a lot of money, and not least, remarkably my yearly colds just vanished. In addition I became a lot stronger, increasing my benchpress 1RM by 30%.

We were walking on water, but gradually I was losing my Deep Work routines. First I noticed I didn’t really learn as much as I used to. I also had trouble focusing in the hectic environment at the trading desk. I tried hiding behind my headphones, blasting very familiar gothic power ballads to drown out all else. It worked, but I still thought I had to respond quickly to e-mails, DMs and other calls. That made me distracted, as if all the meetings with clients, brokers, analysts, CEOs, presentations, board meetings, IT and admin meetings, accountant meetings didn’t already crave too much of my time.

I gradually lost my ability to focus, which morphed into an unwillingness to focus. I found it harder and harder to remember names, even inside my Dunbar number. Often the days just passed in a blur of non-productive reactive behavior. Only when I really had to get things done n time and with a certain quality, I made sure nothing could disturb me and I went deep for a few hours, increasing my productivity 10-fold. If I had only known about the framework of Deep Work back then. Now, I had an intuitive feeling for the concept, but not enough confidence to consistently benefit from it.

As an added burden the summer of 2012 was when Futuris lucky streak ended with the head of ECB, Draghi’s retarded “Whatever it takes” speech. Just about a year later we were back on track, but for various reasons were wrong-footed again.

Lacking the ability to focus, feeling I didn’t learn as much anymore, having central bankers and others push the fund around out of my control, I eventually lost my last appetite for the business toward the end of 2013.

What really did it in the end was the realization that there was almost no correlation whatsoever between my efforts and the outcome for the fund. Thus I longed for a situation where a certain input would more or less reliably render a desired output – at least on average and over time.

It’s almost ironic; I finally slept well, almost enough, even if I still had psychological scars from my earlier severe sleep deprivation and was looking forward to retirement with plenty of sleep and some calm and quiet. I made a lot of money (OK, not in 2013, but there was no reason not to expect more going forward). I had found a nice rhythm for my workout routine. And yet, I had all but decided to quit.

When I said the words in January 2014, I felt a wave of relief. No regrets, no negative feelings at all, only relief and happiness. Maybe, just maybe the thought “I should have done this sooner” surfaced momentarily, but was quickly replaced by “No, this was just perfect”.

I agreed to stay on as just the managing director for about a year, to make the transition smooth, I started sleeping 7 hours a night, maybe even a little more. The biggest change, however, was not having to engage in the market chatter anymore. That freed up almost 50 hours a week for reading blogs and articles about self improvement and science. I studied Portuguese, French, Javascript, Python, math and even signed up for a Stanford course on AI (but quit after a few lessons).

That’s when Alexander and Mike (Cernovich) inspired me to start blogging for real in June/July 2014 at my previous site AlwaysBeBruceWayne.blogspot

And outside the office I built up a list of science podcasts that I listened to during my long walks in nature – sometimes barefoot, even below freezing. As of today I listen to over 20 podcasts regularly, every single show.

The articles are still there; and I often draw from them when writing new posts. Slowly I found my own center again and gradually realized all the profound insights I had accumulated during my 20 years in high finance. I’m still often surprised by the underlying quality there and the important thoughts I put down in writing in 2014.

All my struggles, all the hard work, all my mistakes, gullibility, all the flaws I exhibited between 1994 and 2014 now power me instead. During, it felt like my entire life, but after, it’s actually just 20 years, which really is nothing.

Summary

Phew!

That was a long way to say: “think through who you are, what you want to accomplish and the most effective path there”.

Executive summary: AI is coming. You’d better think about your career and investment opportunities in AI and robotics. And the importance of Deep Work to keep up.

Hint: Google, FB, Amazon

Length: 2128 words

The robot overlords are drawing closer

Finally a machine beat a decent player at the ancient eastern game of Go. With decent I don’t mean an Asian grand master, but at least a three time European champion.

Artificial Intelligence keeps progressing, no matter whether you know about (or like it) or not.

First an AI application is typically seen as a curiosity. Then it becomes a tool you need to learn how to use. And eventually it will develop to the point where it could take your job.

IBM’s Watson easily beat the world’s best Jeopardy masters several years ago. Since then it has become the world’s foremost oncology expert.

Currently Watson is on its way to start replacing swathes of paralegals at law firms as well as finding new oil reserves. A few years down the road, anyone with a cellphone (or AugReal contact lens) will be able to tap into Watson-like powers for any kind of search or research.

Over the coming 20 years, most jobs will be affected by the progress in robotics and AI. Hence, even if you are aiming for future-proof industries (The 5 Singularity Enablers or The Big 5 human issues, or, most likely, a combination*), you’ll nevertheless need to learn to work with robots and artificial agents, or risk replacement.

If you’re flipping burgers, sewing garments, assembling consumer electronics, building cars or houses, reading court cases, writing (sports) news, trading stocks or driving any type of vehicles for a living, you’ll soon be out of work (except if you can leverage the new technology in some creative way).

Deep Work makes you change-resistant

To stay one step ahead of the AIs; to be a fast learner as well as able to tap into your most creative powers, one indispensable skill for the future will be the ability to perform deep, focused thinking and problem solving, i.e., Deep Work, in the words of Cal Newport.

Rather than allowing various notifications from e-mail, Twitter, Facebook. Instagram etc. to force your days into shallow, responsive, always on-line type of activities, you should practice going off-line and “deep” for longer stretches of time (30-90 minutes) as often as you can.

Buy it, it may be your best investment ever

Deep work restructures your brain, making it easier going forward to enter a state of flow and focus, and thus becoming more and more effective, and increasingly able to perform above AI-level, not to mention quickly learn new skills, including how to use new (AI) tools.

Meditation helps too, but that’s just too weird and Eastern for most – at least if we’re talking about 30-minute long sessions or more. I myself had much rather turn everything off for 90 minutes and solve an intellectual problem at the top of my ability (writing a blog post, a new book, or working if I had a job).

If you can’t beat the robots, join them

This Tuesday I (and my dog Ronja) talked in front of 400+ engineering students at Sweden’s top technological university, Chalmers. I specifically remember three interesting questions.

What made your fund so successful?

What advice would you have given yourself as a student today?

What would you have studied today?

Answers to important questions are superpositions of the entire spectrum of answers

What’s particularly intriguing about the first question is that my number one success factor was also the number one negative at the same time:

Being unbiased and fundamental

It worked extremely well over the several bull and bear waves during my career (1994-2015). On the other hand, being unbiased and fundamental also made it all but impossible to ride the bull waves (“bubbles”) long enough – in particular the last one (the quantitative easing bubble that finally seems to be bursting).

I often find that the most important questions are answered in the same “how long is a piece of string” fashion. Learn to recognize and acknowledge those situations, rather than dislike them. They provide you with a much wider range of choices than clear-cut 1 or 0 situations.

Nr 2 is also easy: Direct your studies and career toward something that interests you, that you like, that gives you the “unfair advantage” of having your favorite hobby as your work.

No matter how successful (or not) you get, at least you had fun on the way. And, given the unfair advantage, you’ll probably change the world in some positive way and become rich/famous/of stature, no matter if you want to or not.

Build authority through usefulness (for you and others), not (empty and meaningsless) celebrity or wealth

I however began by saying that I myself would never have listened to such advice, and that I didn’t expect anybody to do it today either. At 22 I was too focused on making money, or at least on getting a job, any job. In my eagerness to become independent I as quickly as possible put myself into wage slavery and the consumption rat race.

In my defense, I hardly understood the concept of starting a business. I had a very static view of the world and kind of thought all companies already existed.

Hmmm, that didn’t make me look any better did it?

Resistance is futile

The third question could have been answered in a myriad more or less complicated ways. To keep it simple and clear, I boiled it down to one single word: Robotics.

Going east, to Japan, China or South Korea, is preferable for anybody going into robotics. However, it probably isn’t necessary – and France, Germany, The U.S. and Sweden also hold their own within robotics. It’s even possible Google and other U.S. companies are on their way to overtaking the Asians.

Except for North Korea of course. Their mighty leader has already built a super strong general AI that will rain fire over the western subhuman devils. Just recently, e.g., Kim Jong Un’s AI crafted the most efficient and gloriously superior hydrogen fusion bomb that history will ever see.

I wonder if he has any idea how funny he is

Why robotics?

Because everything comes together there. And it’s the most future-proof industry there is.

If you want to get really dystopian, in the future the only humans left are the ones tending to the robots. In a parallel universe, robot owners and robotics stock owners are the ones holding the upper hand.

The geeks shall inherit the earth

Robotics is industry’s equivalent of Deep Work. Every single part of a robot is developed at the leading edge, at the top of everyone’s ability; technology, biology, biotechnology, neurology, philosophy, psychology, programming, materials, motors, artificial intelligence. The combination of these into useful and robust machines demands even more of the creators (i.e., you).

If you are wary of being made redundant by automation (and you should), the obvious solution is to be the one controlling the automation (and inheriting the earth).

It’s not “just robots”

There is so much to do in robotics: vision, balance, appearance, movement, safety, reasoning, emotion, interface, power source, touch, control. And each of those need to be craftily integrated with the others, e.g. vision, prediction and balance.

Take just vision as one example. Ideally you’d want to combine radar, ultrasound, stereo vision, texture analysis algorithms, laser, object data bases, blueprints, recent memory, inference algorithms etc. in one single system, in order to rapidly and reliably map the environment in 3D, as well as make forecasts for the coming milliseconds, seconds and possibly minutes to prepare probable movements.

Similar issues are facing research teams within, e.g., balance/movement (motors, artificial muscles, scenario simulation, limb synchronization. machine learning) as well as other important sub-segments of robotics.

At the user end, there really are no limits to where robots and AIs might go: industry, care, household, status, services, shopping, news, education, search & rescue, surgery, research & exploration, sex/porn and on and on. Every single area of life and business will be affected in the coming two (or maybe three) decades. Read more about the steps to AI here, or read, e.g., Kurzweil’s book “How To Create A Mind”.

Simply put, robots is where all technologies converge. It’s a place to perform deep, accelerated, learning and highly value added work. It’s a place where cross-discipline knowledge and deep, associative, and lateral thinking will come at a premium.

My advice is to take your favorite area (hobby), and combine it with some supportive technology and apply those in robotics. I can’t see how you could lose.

If you are an engineer, or psychologist, or designer; if you go into robotics and AI, if you take the “unfair” angle of doing it from the standpoint of fascination, you just can’t lose.

I may have told these guys at Chalmers that aiming for an employment at a big engineering firm, rather than starting your own business, would be just sad…

On the other hand, I also told them they had no business worrying about the coming recession or not earning their livelihood. Very few, if any, of them will even notice the coming recession – except for from tabloid headlines.

Focus, go deep, and go robot

Don’t forget my message to prepare for a fast-changing world by practicing true, off-line, no notifications, focus, as well as perhaps playing Go and meditating, lest constant e-mailing every day will erode your protective myelin layers in the brain completely, making future deep work practically impossible.

Without the ability to perform deep work, even going into robotics won’t save you in the long run. So, leave the 99% behind and commit to stretching that brain of yours regularly.

But now on to something completely different, investing in robotics and AI companies

Investment opportunities

Sorry, there are no free lunches.

Well you didn’t think I would hand out free buy recommendations, did you?

To prepare for the future, practice focus, use your time in deep focus to advance your skills and understanding of how you can contribute to the field of robotics.

And Go East (Japan, China, South Korea)

Or possibly west.

Or stay where you are.

And think about becoming an owner of AI and robotics companies while there is still time. I plan to buy some of the most obvious ones (including Google) in the ongoing market downturn (2016-2017).

Please help spreading this important post

I think this is the most important article I have ever written, and I would like as many students and other interested people as possible to get the chance to read it.

So, please help spreading it as widely as possible through your social networks: Twitter, Facebook, Google+ etc., and tell your friends about it IRL too.

P.S.“Subscribe” If you are new here, don’t forget to subscribe to my newsletter (weekly updates and retarded recounts) and get my free eBook about my 15-year struggle at the European Hedge Fund Of The Decade (“The Retarded Hedge Fund Manager”).

P.P.S. “Glorious future” No, I’m not dystopian. I actually think we’re headed for a glorious future. After a couple of years of economic and financial rout that is.